would you like some tea with that broken heart?
by Agent of the Apothecary
Summary: Three men who didn’t want Hermione Granger, and the one that actively broke her heart in the process. "It was right about when she realized she didn't care if he was a werewolf that Hermione conceded she might fancy Professor Lupin a tiny bit."


**Story:** would you like some tea with that broken heart?

**Summary:** Three men who didn't want Hermione Granger, and the one that actively broke her heart in the process.

**Notes:** This is me, attempting to write _Harry Potter_ again—and not as stealing-sweatshirt retribution, either. Wish me luck.

**Disclaimer:** God, I wish I had that much money. I wouldn't be shuffling my way through an insane prompt on _Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf_, for one.

* * *

When Hermione Granger was seven years old, she (kind of) fancied her mathematics teacher. He was terribly bright, and as he strung the class through their multiplication tables, he would smile at the children who had correct answers (of which Hermione had many), showing a flash of white teeth.

His hair was the color of wet sand, and if it was a tad bit too long for a primary school teacher, Hermione was certainly the last one to complain; it was just the sort of rakish hair that one expected from the shy bassist in a rock band, or the film actor who always played the computer-literate, semi-geeky sidekick. (Hermione had long suspected it was her fate to get the computer-literate, semi-geeky sidekick, and thus planned her crushes accordingly.)

Mr. Pryce seemed to understand her better than her classmates, and he didn't mind that she sat by his desk during the lunch break rather than with the other girls. Occasionally he would look up as though checking to see if she was still there, and he would give a tilted little smile upon seeing her in the same place, teeth sunk into her usual ham-on-rye.

The next year, he married the school librarian, who was tall and blonde and borderline insipid (in Hermione's much-vaunted eight-year-old opinion), and they moved closer to London so she could get a job at a posh public school. Mathematics became Hermione's least favorite class, although she always did well on exams.

* * *

When Hermione Granger was eleven years old, she stumbled upon a rather interesting book series written (if not well, at least competently) by a dashingly handsome—even more so than the old mathematics teacher she had, for the most part, forgotten—wizard. She admired him academically for his bravery; courage that, even though she had been sorted into Gryffindor two weeks earlier, she knew she didn't possess.

The next year, he came to teach at Hogwarts, and for the second time her life she found herself exceedingly devoted to her studies. If his smile was a little stiff, the laugh lines around his eyes a little manufactured—well, at least Professor Lockhart noticed and appreciated her, unlike someone she could mention, and when she had the right answer (which she always did), he didn't call her a 'large brain.'

Eventually, Hermione came upon the realization that Professor Lockhart had the bravery of a bowl of porridge (he was also tall, blond, and borderline insipid, which worsened matters). She was understandably irked by this development.

She didn't throw out his books, because Hermione was a bibliophile in the best (and worst) sense of the word, but she did put them in the bookshelf in the office where all of her primary school books were kept, and resolved to think no more of the matter.

(Her opinion on _certain _redheaded members of the opposite gender remained obligatorily disapproving.)

* * *

When Hermione Granger was fourteen years old, she met a shabby-looking man on the train to Hogwarts. He looked tired and somewhat defeated by world events being as they were (in a word: terrible), and yet when the Dementors came and made a fuss, he was retaining control of the situation before Hermione had time to do anything other than blink at Harry's falling body and slightly unhinge her jaw.

When Hermione caught Harry a moment before his head hit the floor and pulled a cushion from the tip of her wand, the man smiled at her, apparently impressed, and Hermione was intrigued. (In an entirely academic fashion, of course.)

By the middle of that school year, she knew he was a werewolf.

The realization came to her while writing Professor Snape's paper (as he had no doubt intended; she spared a moment to be frustrated that she had fallen for Professor Snape's tricks) in November, and she waited, her quill poised over her parchment, for the betrayal to come. She waited for the disgust, the fear, for anything, really, to warm her to this theory.

As she watched, a drop of ink gathered at the tip of her quill and splattered onto the page, obscuring her last sentence. She stared at her right hand, the fingernail of her index finger underlining _the amount of hair on a werewolf in human form increases when the full moon both approaches, appears, and wanes_ and felt absolutely nothing, except a faint rumbling in her stomach that reminded her that she had skipped lunch.

It was right about then that Hermione conceded she might conceivably fancy Professor Lupin a tiny bit.

She expected to have trouble meeting his eyes, at the very least, if not recoil at his very presence when he passed by; he was a werewolf, for goodness' sake, and after three years of being Harry Potter's best friend, Hermione had a highly developed sense of danger. Common sense _should_ have forced her to run in the other direction.

But when his tired smile fell on her in class, and his approval still made her stomach curl and her hand rocket into the air, she decided that perhaps warning Harry and Ron wouldn't be the most prudent of actions (they tended to overreact). After all, Dumbledore had to have known about his lycanthropy and yet still chose to accept him as a teacher—and Dumbledore was never wrong.

The betrayal came eventually, when she stared over the tip of his wand as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sirius Black, and all the pain finally washed over her.

Buried inside of it was the sweet aftertaste of anger, at herself for deluding herself into thinking that he was good and kind because his smile made her head feel light, and the pain made her whole body shake and her voice break. Oh god, for months, she'd been protecting him because of her damn schoolgirl crush, when all the while she should've been protecting _Harry_ . . .

Later, she convinced herself with a very cunningly worded entry in her journal that it was mostly her pride that had been wounded. The little part of her fourteen-year-old self in love with Remus Lupin (the part that had fallen apart and broken in the top corner room of the Shrieking Shack) was shrouded in logic and left to dust.

* * *

When Hermione Granger was eighteen, Remus Lupin burst through the door to Shell Cottage and told them he was a father, and his hands were fluttering and lost and his eyes were so clear and knowing, and that little part broke all over again. (Tonks wasn't tall, blonde, or insipid, but she wasn't Hermione either, and that was mostly the point.)

* * *

_. . . and thus I continue to ship Hermione with non-canon, eminently unsuitable men. Yay for consistency, right?_

_Er. Yes. Thoughts?  
_


End file.
